“I figured you’d think it karmic retribution for what was done to you.”
Those furious blue eyes bored into her. “You never really knew me at all, did you?”
“I knew you. I knew every thought in your head.”
“Then what am I thinking now?” His tone held a fierce challenge it.
But there was no need in that. “I don’t know anymore. You never showed me this side of you.”
“And what side is that?”
“The aristo who treats everyone around him like they’re beneath him.”
He laughed bitterly. “Then we’re even.”
“How so?”
“You never showed me the ruthless bitch side of you.”
Now that set her temper on fire. How dare he! “That’s not fair.”
“Not fair?” He snarled those two words. “Not fair is watching my baby sister get shot in the back by a weapon
I
made for
you
.” He stormed across the room to tower over where she sat on his sofa. “Not fair is hearing a man
I
fought beside, tell other people I’d put my ass on the line for, that
‘the bitch’
is dead. That bitch is
the same age as
your
sister, and I feel the same way about her that you do for Sorche. So don’t you
dare
talk to me about fairness.”
Her throat tightened at every angry word he spat at her. She heard and she understood. If that had been done to Sorche, she’d be out for blood, too.
But she had to put at least part of the record straight. “
I
did
not
give that to Clarion. He stole it from me.”
He scoffed at her. “Do you really think that inconsequential detail mattered to me while I hung for months in that room, thinking I’d killed the sister I swore to protect?”
No. The guilt and grief had to be horrifying. She couldn’t imagine thinking that something she’d created had been used to kill her sister.
There couldn’t be any worse hell. If he was insane, that alone was reason enough for it.
Wanting to comfort him, she reached up to cup his face.
He pulled back with a snarl. “Don’t touch me.”
Those words hit her like blows, and once more, they brought home the fact that he hated her.
“What do you want me to say? I’m sorry? I am, just so you know. But I’m also aware that words cannot undo what was done to you. They can’t fix those wounds. I would give anything if they could. But I know better.” She looked up at him, wishing there was some way to reach him and make him see the truth inside her.
But there wasn’t.
And that hurt most of all.
Licking her lips, she kept coming back to the one thing she couldn’t deny no matter how hard she tried. “Gods spare me the agony, but I still love you.”
He raked her with a repugnant glare. “And I hate you in a way I’ve never hated anyone. Not even my uncle.”
The acrimony in his tone tore into her like knives and shredded her heart. “Why would you say something so mean?”
“Because it’s true. I always knew where I stood with him. He hated me from the moment I was born. But you…” His scarred voice carried the full weight of his disgust. “You made me believe a lie. And then you kicked me in my teeth and rammed it down my throat. When I needed you most, when I was being brutalized by the people I stupidly thought were my friends, I heard you laughing on the other side of the door every day with the same people who were torturing me. Every moment of that horror, I kept hoping and praying you would come in and help me. And every day you disappointed me until the only thing I could think about was ripping your callous heart out of your chest and eating it whole.”
Zarya wept at what he described.
But what hurt the most was what he hadn’t thrown in her face…
When she’d finally gone into that room, she’d slapped him. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t you dare cry.”
“Fuck you, you sanctimonious bastard! At least I didn’t throw you away… twice!” She got up to leave again.
Once more, he cut her path off and stood between her and the door. “Aren’t you full of surprises? I’ve never heard you use profanity like that.”
He was lucky she wasn’t spewing even more at him. ’Cause right now, she wanted to verbally strike him as much as he’d struck her. And honestly, she wasn’t sure how she was keeping it all in. “What do you want from me?”
“I don’t know. I…”
Darling forgot what he was going to say as his gaze dropped to see the deep cleft between her breasts. She was so much shorter than him that he had a direct view all the way down to the fact that she didn’t have on any underwear.
His throat went dry.
He wanted to hate her. He needed to hate her and yet…
Memories of the past tortured him. In all of his life, she had been his only refuge. Her voice had guided him through hell and led him out the other side of it. No matter how bad things had been, she’d always made it better.
In her arms, he’d never known pain. Only comfort.
Pleasure…
She betrayed you.
He couldn’t allow himself to lose sight of that brutal fact. Yet right now, he felt himself slipping under her spell.
He was so confused. It was so easy to hate her when she wasn’t around.
But one whiff of her scent. One glimpse of her body. The sound of his name on her lips…
He was weakened and undone.
Don’t you dare think about forgiving her.
He wanted to hang on to his anger and hatred with both hands. To wrap himself up in its protective coat so that no one could ever hurt him again.
And yet as he looked into her amber eyes…
He saw what no one else had ever given him.
Her heart.
God, help me. Please…
Zarya froze at the sight of his hunger for her. This was the man she knew. The one she wanted back at any cost.
But underneath that was a pain so profound it stole her breath. He was wounded so badly that it made her own heart ache for him. She couldn’t stand to see him like this. He looked lost and tormented.
Please come back to me.
She needed what they’d had. Needed him to tell her everything would be okay and that he still loved her, no matter what.
Before he withdrew from her again, she rose up and captured his lips.
He wrapped his arms around her, fisting his hands behind her back as he kissed her senseless. Closing her eyes, she breathed him in. All of her emotions slammed into her. Her fear that he’d been killed. Her guilt over what they’d done to him. Her anger over the way he’d treated her.
But most of all was the love she despised feeling for him. Only he could destroy her.
Darling burned with a need to kill her. He did. The darkness inside wanted nothing from her except to feel her blood on his hands. But the man in him only wanted to lie in her arms until she drove the demons inside him straight back to hell where they belonged.
He needed the peace she alone gave him. Just for one moment, he wanted to feel secure again. Feel something other than this bitterness that ate at him until it drove him to murder the ones who caused it.
For so long now, he’d been lost. But as he tasted her, he remembered what it was like to be home. To feel welcomed…
And in this instant, that was what his battered soul craved most.
Growling, he picked her up and carried her over to his desk. With one arm, he sent everything on top of it to the floor. Then he set her down. His heart hammering, he stared at her, torn between the two things he wanted most.
To kill her and to love her…
She pulled the gown off, over her head.
His thoughts scattered as he saw the body that had haunted him since the moment he’d first touched her. She had the most beautiful breasts of any woman ever born. And as she arched her back, all the blood drained from his head and went straight to his groin.
He’d be mad at her later.
Right now, all he could think about was being inside her. Of tasting her until he was drunk from her rather than the alcohol that had sustained him for months. Desperate for her, he dipped his head down to take her right breast into his mouth. He sucked his breath in sharply at how good she tasted, at how much he’d missed this.
Closing his eyes, he savored the sweet scent of her skin. It made him light-headed.
He rolled his tongue around her puckered nipple while she cradled his head against her. With her right hand, she reached down between them, into his pants to cup him in her hand. Darling saw stars as pleasure tore through his entire body. The only thing that felt better than her hand there was when she went down on him. Little did she know, whenever she did that to him, she owned him, body and soul. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for her or give her whenever she tasted him
That memory alone almost caused him to come.
She wrapped her legs around his waist and leaned back on the desk to stare up at him and cup her breasts in her hands. Damn, the sight of her there… like that…
Zarya was beautiful. Nothing was better than when she looked up at him like he was hers and she wanted him as much as he wanted her. He pulled his gloves off so that he could run his scarred hands over her smooth breasts.
Taking his hand into hers as he cupped her breast, she ground the center of her body against his swollen cock. “I need you inside me, Darling. Please…” She guided his hand down over her flat stomach to where she was already wet for him.
He ground in his teeth as he fingered her and she murmured in pleasure. In that moment, he forgot everything except them.
There was no pain now. No past. Nothing else in existence
except his hunger to have her. He needed her like he needed air to breathe.
Zarya opened his pants so that she could guide him into her body. For the first time in their relationship, she saw his blue eyes staring into hers as he filled her. Her breath caught at how good he felt like this. And when he started thrusting against her hips, she groaned out loud.
This was what she’d craved for so long. To hold him again in her arms. No one loved her the way he did. No one. Happy to have him back, even for only a moment, she lifted his hand so that she could nip his fingers and suck on them as he made love to her.
Darling let her cries of pleasure wash over him while she held him close and ran her hands over his back. He’d forgotten the fact that she was an outrageous screamer whenever they made love. And there was nothing he liked more than hearing his name on her lips when he was inside her.
“Say my name,” he panted in her ear. “My real name.”
“Darling!”
He thrust harder and deeper while she punctuated each stroke with her voice. She came an instant later with a cry of pleasure so loud, it echoed in the room and his ears.
Smiling in triumph as he watched the ecstasy on her face, Darling waited until she was completely finished before he let himself go.
Oh yeah… that was what he’d needed. Thank the gods, he didn’t have any of the pain Syn had feared would come with an orgasm. At least the most important part of his body still worked the way it was supposed to.
Spent, weak, and finally sated after all these months, Darling lay himself down on top of her while she ran her hands under his shirt, over his scarred back. Her touch felt like heaven.
But as his senses returned, he realized where they were.
Not in her house.
They were in his office…
And he was a soulless, hideous monster. One who hated her.
He lifted himself up to look down at her as his anger renewed itself.
Her eyes smiled at him as she reached for his mask. “You told me that the next time we were together, you’d let me see all of you.”
Yes, but things had been different then. As ugly as he’d thought himself before, it was nothing compared to what he was now. They had utterly destroyed what little he’d had, and left him completely disfigured and foul.
Bracing himself for the horror and rejection he’d see in her amber eyes, he didn’t move as she released the strap on the mask and pulled it free.
She didn’t disappoint him in the least. He saw just what he’d expected. She was as repulsed by his looks as he was.
Who could blame her? He looked like a total hideous freak. How could anyone ever love someone so ugly?
Zarya gasped at what they’d done to him. Even with the thick auburn beard that covered most of his face, she could see the deep, awful scars all over it. From the depth and number, it was obvious that each one had been intentional. Done for no other reason than to ruin his looks and make him suffer. There was a scar along the length of his left nostril where someone had sliced it open. The one on his right was even longer. Two more jagged scars ran from the corner of his right eye, causing it to droop. Another thick one ran over his upper lip, causing it to arch up at a peculiar angle. Both corners of his mouth held definitive scars from the muzzle they’d forced on him.
And there, in his right cheek, through the beard, she saw where Pip had carved his name in giant letters.